That Great Green Giant – Sustainable Energy

It is well-known that the planet’s resources have been mismanaged over the last few centuries and are well on their way to becoming depleted. Many of these problems are a direct result of lack of foresight when supplies were plentiful. Gradually society has woken up to the fact that, without direct intervention, energy sources will be in short supply if something is not done now to preserve future energy supplies for later generations. As this theme has developed and the truth of energy depletion has become universally recognised, more and more people have taken on the challenge to preserve what energy sources are still available and to attempt to incorporate the use of natural sources of energy into their everyday lives – energy such as that obtained from wind farms or energy from harnessing the power of water

The sustainable energy, contingent was originally considered slightly eccentric, akin to the ‘Greenham Common Women’. Environmental issues only really became a hot issue when global warming was detected and which, for many years, was attributed to the ‘carborexia’ – that group of people who are ‘darker green’ than the rest of us. Originally the province of the ‘veggies’, that derogatory term which singled out the original group of environmentally concerned people, the ‘green revolution’ became a much more pronounced issue once scientists had finally convinced the majority that the planet was both warming up and resources we had taken for granted were becoming scarcer. Fortunately, technology has advanced sufficiently for other sources of energy to become feasible.

Energy from wind farms, for instance, is well established globally and enough energy can be collected from a series of wind turbines to generate enough power to continuously feed the electricity grid in a number of countries from the USA to India. This form of alternative energy is renewable and easily sustainable. Green energy refers to forms of energy which can be obtained from natural sources which are completely renewable so do not deplete constrained resources in doing so. Other forms of green energy are obtained from solar panels and from wave power. In the Andalusia region of Spain arrays of solar panels are so effective that a huge amount of the Iberian National Grid is provided with vast amounts of green energy from power collected through solar panels and routed through transformers into the National Electricity Grid.

Water power is another source of potential energy, obtained from the force of the water instead of the force of the wind. Again, like wind power, the energy obtained from water power is collected and routed through transformers to convert the energy into usable electricity. It has been shown that renewable energy sources are financially viable and, although the large white turbines detract from local beauty spots, renewable energy is with us to stay and the mantras of ‘green energy’ and ‘sustainable power’ will continued to be heard.